


Initiation

by DictionaryWrites



Series: Marauders' Era Fic [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Dark Magic, Death Eaters, Emotional Manipulation, Hogwarts Seventh Year, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Marauders' Era, Murder, Power Dynamics, Sexual Repression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-17 07:33:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16970415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: In the summer before his final year, Severus Snape goes before the Dark Lord, and offers himself as a servant.It is everything he could have imagined.





	Initiation

The entrance hall of Malfoy Manor is colder and darker than it has ever felt before, and Severus stands alone in the dismal darkness, waiting for a masked figure to come from the closed double doors of the great dining room ( _how many times has Severus seated  himself in that dining room, withstanding Lucius’ interrogations and Narcissa’s polite questions, under the glowing loathing of Abraxas Malfoy’s steely gaze? How many times? And now, within—_ )

Severus inhales slightly as he draws himself up to his full height, feeling the shift of the muscle in his shoulders, the shift of his neck as he rolls it in his place. It is the sixth of July, and Severus – finally, _finally_ , an adult in his own right – is free to move about as he pleases, his Apparition license smoothly beneath his belt, the world—

Well.

Not open.

There are strict paths he might take, scant options available to him, but he must grasp for the opportunities as they might present themselves, and this, this is one. It had been Mulciber who had made the suggestion, three years his senior and desperate to impress the Dark Lord, to bring him an adequate potential…

And Severus has potential, doesn’t he?

More than that.

He is an innovator, makes such potions and hexes the likes of which many have never seen, and he can impress, draw his way closer – make for himself a position as a general or better beneath the Dark Lord’s inevitable regime…

Killing people is no hardship. Killing men like his father, monsters with heavy fists who spit on the word “magic”, who would see every wizard and witch dead if they only knew them to be real, that is no trouble either, and as for the rest—

There is a part of him that burns with distinct anxiety, with desperate pain and uncertainty, at the idea of murdering somebody who’s never actually done something to deserve it. Someone just living their life, who had no more choice over their parents than he did, but if fate has cast one a hand of cards, one must merely make the best of them. And Severus…

What other option is there than this?

True and forever purity is a myth, simply cannot be sustained in perpetuity without engendering such ugly obscenities as the likes of Bellatrix Lestrange, unhinged and violent as an inbred bitch, but the Dark Lord is an intelligent man, surely knows that. There is a wider agenda afoot, there _must_ be, and if a few must die at Severus’ wand, if he might gain for himself some _semblance_ of power, of influence, that which he will never achieve without the Dark Lord’s influence…

Then his decision is made.

And Lord Voldemort, Lord Voldemort, that name that no one will let pass from their tongue, slip between their teeth and touch the air that might betray them ( _because they say it is taboo, they say that merely to utter the name shall call the man upon you),_ Lord Voldemort had called him here, that he might meet him in person, that Severus might look upon a legend and bow before him, _speak_ with him…

There is no sense in hopeless moralising. Everyone has always expected him to be a Death Eater, anyway: a Death Eater he must be, for no one will believe him to be anything else. And if on this path lies true power, if this way lies the barest recognition, if this way lies _everything_ …

“Severus,” says a voice behind him, and he recognises Lucius’ silken tone, recognises the disapproval laden in it, even as he turns and beholds a shining silver mask. He looks at the blue eyes that shine through the eye holes, and he feels his breath catch in his throat as Lucius looks him up and down, and then reaches forward. Severus holds himself still as Lucius grips hard at his chin, the dragonscale of his gloves pressing their fabric right against his skin, and Severus lets out a sharp noise of pain as he presses down tighter, one of his hands going for Lucius’ wrist, but Lucius is a big man with thick muscle on his arms ( _like Severus’ father)_ , and Severus has no hope of wrenching himself free if Lucius doesn’t release him. But Lucius does release him ( _he isn’t your father, you stupid fool, he’s scarcely six years your senior)_ after only a moment, and Severus clenches his hands at his side. “He is ready for you now. I do hope you’re happy with the position you’ve put yourself in.”

“How could I be anything but happy?” Severus asks in a soft whisper, using the voice that Lucius had cultivated for him this year past, all remnants of his mother’s lilt and his father’s gruff snarl neatly edited from his speech and his mannerisms, leaving naught but Severus, a thin and ugly man in carefully tailored robes, with carefully tailored personhood. “To serve such a master as the Dark Lord would be a privilege.” Lucius had disapproved, when Mulciber had put forth his name – Lucius had argued with him, insisted he not put himself forth before the Dark Lord’s service, but it cannot possibly be worry as to Severus’ safety: it is jealousy, and concern that Severus might surpass him in the Dark Lord’s service.

It must be.

Powerlessly, Lucius exhales, and Severus wonders what his face might look beneath the mask, if it truly betrays _care_ for Severus, if such a thing could even be possible—

( _Of course he cares for you, as Slughorn does: you are an asset to him, a valuable dog in his kennels.)_

_(He loves you. He tells you so whenever he sees you.)_

_(Not this time.)_

Lucius shifts his posture, the movement minute as he draws himself up, and Severus keeps his expression entirely neutral, coaxing his mind into blankness, as if he is naught but dark water in a clean cauldron.

“It is,” Lucius agrees, in a different tone – this one grander, more befitting his station, and less laden with emotion, with feeling, with— “Come.” Severus follows Lucius with care, focusing on the smoothness of his gait, his shoulders back, his head forward. He has no mask, and he shall not be given one, not yet – Severus knows it would be foolish to give a student still at Hogwarts a uniform, a seat in the Inner Circle, but he might prove himself in his final year, might…

He will.

He _will_.

The wide dining hall of Malfoy Manor is empty of the usual long table that Severus expects to see at centre, in parallel to the fire: instead, a great chair, a throne, rests on a raised dais before the fire, and behind it he can see the flicker of the flames silhouetting the man seated there, hiding his face from view. The very silhouette sends a thrill through Severus’ body, and immediately he averts his eyes, not wanting his black gaze to rest for too long on the figure of his would-be master, and be read as arrogance, or as desperation.

Death Eaters stand in rows on each side of the room, their hands loosely clasped together, their shoulders back, their silver masks shining in the dim light, and every single one of them has his arms trained on Severus, their gazes trained on him. It is uniquely disturbing, the sensation of so many trained eyes on him, waiting for him to trip, waiting for him to fail, to fall—

But this is not Hogwarts.

Potter is not waiting behind one of those masks, and Black does not lay prone behind a curtain, ready to make a laughing stock of him: here, he might prove himself.

There is some energy he knows not how to name in this great room he knows so well, with the curtains drawn and not a candle lit: he is aware of the quiet breathing of every other figure in the room, their very heartbeats seeming to synchronise as they stand as members of this nebulous and unknown monster, each making up a part of the tongue and the skull, each a part of the Dark Lord’s inner circle…

And might Severus join them? Might he wear a mask like this himself, one day, and be a part of a whole instead of an inkblot staining a page, solitary and apart from everything, from everyone?

Lucius draws away from him, standing beside another robed figure just a little shorter than he is, with similarly piercing blue eyes, and Severus wonders if Abraxas Malfoy despises him in this moment as much as he seems to at any other time… The thought gives him the barest satisfaction, allowing him a distracted thought, and he moves toward the throne, walking very straight, and rather slowly. His boots make nary a sound on the stone floor, his enchantments upon their soles almost perfected, and his new robes fit him so _perfectly_ , cling tight to his body and flow where they ought, aren’t too short or too long—

He drops to his knees in a smooth, easy motion, bowing his head before the dais. He does not dare look up at the figure within, does not dare lay his eyes upon this man, _the Dark Lord_ , that serves himself in so many legends, who has been the cause of so many deaths, and who has considered Severus Snape, the Half-blood Prince ( _a foolish thing, a passing fancy, you ought not consider such childish appellations even in your own thoughts)_ , and not found him wanting.

Not yet.

( _Not ever?)_

“My lord,” Severus murmurs, and he watches the hem of the Dark Lord’s robe upon the stone floor as he shifts forward on the great throne in which he sits, a throne which resembles – now that Severus is close enough to examine it in the flickering light, which is meagre but almost enough – the seat of the Headmaster at Hogwarts. The Dark Lord comes to his feet, and Severus forces himself to control his breathing, keeping it slow and even as he performs his graceful bow, and yet he cannot prevent the whistle-fast train of his thoughts. Is the Dark Lord handsome, or monstrous? Young, or old? He moves with a serpentine grace, and his footsteps are entirely silent on the floor as he moves to the edge of the dais, and Severus risks a glance at his pale hand as it comes forward, before Severus’ face.

This hand is a delicate thing, strong but with slender fingers and long fingernails, the skin smooth and catching the light as marble does, smoothly and with a subtly ethereal whiteness, and yet there is a waxy quality to it, a sort of roughness to the skin that seems not entirely human.

( _The Dark Arts are a precarious road upon which to tread, you know,_ Lucius had once said to him, wrinkling his nose at a book Severus had borrowed from the Malfoy library. _A hex or a jinx here and there will do you no harm, but do not bury that nose of yours in darker rituals, lest you hurt yourself._

 _I won’t hurt myself,_ Severus had promised in a long-suffering tone, and he had read the book regardless.)

“Severus Snape,” the Dark Lord says, and Severus cannot suppress the shiver that runs down his spine: the voice is higher than he had expected, with a delicately sibilant quality that seems to reach beneath one’s very skin, and Severus exhales sharply as those sharp fingernails touch against the base of his chin, forcing his head up.

There are the remnants of a handsome man in the face of Lord Voldemort.

His jaw is finely chiselled, a slight cleft showing in his pale skin; his hair is thickly dark and glossy, well-kept and coiffed back from his face; his lips are plump and slightly pink, quirked into the slightest of smiles; his eyes are a red-burnished hazel, and in the dim light, their brown colour is hypnotic, making Severus fell as if he is swaying in his place, and yet, and yet…

There is a subtle wrongness about his features, one that far precludes the possibility of him being called handsome today.

The red-tinted eyes move too fast in their place, with too-sharp too-small movements, like the eyes of a cat or a snake, and his eyes are sunken in, shadowed in darkness by the way the bone has given way to some greater pressure; the cheeks are sallow and waxy, looking as if they might yet shed skin and peel back from the muscle; the jaw is slightly too long, as if it might open forth and bear some maw—

“It is an honour, my lord,” Severus says slowly, and the Dark Lord’s lips shift slightly, curving into a smile that makes Severus’ blood run cold in his veins, but he resists the instinctive urge to wrench himself back from the man’s touch, and he does not allow himself to blink. As much as fear rests hot in his veins, bubbling beneath his skin as a potion simmering over a flame, here too is excitement, a desperate thrill, a _need_ to impress, to show himself as something valuable, someone who might _serve_ … And later, eke out his promotion. What is a Slytherin, without ambition?

“Such composure,” the Dark Lord murmurs, his voice honeysweet with praise, and yet snake-like in its subtle hiss. “Why, Severus, so easily do you outshine your seniors. Even your heart beats slower than most who put themselves before me.” Severus, for a long few moments, is very still, but judging by the expectation that shines in the Dark Lord’s eyes, he is expected to garner some reply to this statement, but— What reply? How is he to conduct himself here? He had prepared himself not for such abstract statements on the nature of his calm, and he lacks for a script.

“I seek to conduct myself as is only proper, my lord,” Severus says, trying to focus on keeping the respect heavy in his voice. “I should not greet your grace with bare-faced hysteria.” The Dark Lord blinks, very slowly, and his eyes seem to bore into Severus’ very soul, yet he focuses upon his meditative exercises, allows himself not to panic or to assess every element of his features, merely focuses on retaining his calm…

And the Dark Lord _laughs_.

The sound, high and soft, rings in the quiet of the room, echoing off the high ceiling and making the fine crystal of the unlit chandelier above their heads take on a curious resonance, one that Severus can _feel_ above him, although he hears not a sound. It eats through him and seems to vibrate in his very chest, the Dark Lord’s sharp fingernails still pressed tight against the sensitive skin of Severus’ chin, but when the Dark Lord smiles at him, he seems not displeased, not angry. His laughter—

He is _pleased_.

Severus has pleased him.

It makes him feel light-headed and desperately relieved, his form relaxing just slightly, and the Dark Lord asks, “Would you serve me, Severus, were I to ask you?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“You would serve me loyally, and without hesitation?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“You would kill, then, were I to order it?”

“Of course, my lord,” Severus says, and he does not hesitate, does not pause. Lord Voldemort’s red-tinted gaze flickers from Severus’ face to something behind him, and it takes every minute section of Severus’ self-control not to look behind him, not to wrench his head back to stare.

“Stand, Severus,” the Dark Lord whispers, and on slightly shaky legs, Severus rises to his feet. It occurs to him, madly, that he was a fool to worry as to the gazes of the Death Eaters upon him, to worry as to their exacting stares: standing like this, with the Dark Lord’s attention on him and him alone ( _he is pleased with me, he is pleased with me!)_ , he is exhilarated and set alight with excitement, so much so that he almost forgets to hold his breath at whatever it is that lies behind him.

The Dark Lord reaches for him, and at the touch to each of his skinny shoulders, over the new fabric of his robes, Severus feels his stomach flip in his belly, and he inhales through his nose. The Dark Lord’s expression changes minutely, his lip quirking into a slight smirk, and Severus is careful to control his breathing, to ensure he not breathe too fast, to ensure he not appear undignified in his enthrallment.

And the Dark Lord says naught at all as he turns Severus in his place, moving him to face the other way. There is some… There is something in being manipulated so physically, in being positioned like this – Lucius has done this to him, true enough, has adjusted his posture or rearranged his limbs, but it has never made his skin thrill or his flesh feel hot as it does in this moment, but it is not mere _arousal_ , it is something more. It’s deeper than mere sexual desire, but speaks to the part of Severus that has always _yearned_ to sink himself into magic, always yearned to reach for the novel and the strange, to let it work its way beneath his skin and remake him in a new image—

Lord Voldemort is pure power, and Severus feels drunk on it.

Standing in the midst of the room, swaying on his feet, is a young man. He has softly green eyes, the colour of bottle glass, and his hair is peroxide blond, coiffed back from his face: he wears tight leather trousers and a brightly red blouse, necklaces hanging around his neck… They picked this Muggle up, he has no doubt, from some gay club in London or Manchester or Brighton, drew him in with one of the handsome faces, and now he is Confounded, his eyes defocused…

“Then kill him, Severus,” the Dark Lord murmurs, his mouth directly against the shell of Severus’ ear, his breath hot on Severus’ skin, and Severus feels light-headed and dizzy, his body electrified.

“Yes, my lord,” Severus says, reaching for his wand, and the Dark Lord’s hand squeezes his shoulder, his sharp fingernails digging tight to the flesh, making him stiffen slightly, but it is not unpleasant. Slight pain is naught compared to that which Severus enjoys, _naught_ —

“I am told you are something of an innovator, Severus,” the Dark Lord says: every time he says his name, it is said without mockery, with no sardonic lilt, with no implication of some childish nickname or schoolboy mockery, and Severus can feel the pound of his heart beneath his tightly buttoned robes. “Why don’t you demonstrate for us one of your spells?”

“You flatter me, my lord,” Severus says. The Dark Lord’s response, a low chuckle that burns the back of Severus’ neck, makes his head spin.

Taking a slow step forward, he looks the Muggle in the face, sees his handsome smile, detached and out of it as he looks at Severus, stumbling forward. He cannot be that much older than Severus himself, might even still be in school, but it doesn’t matter who he is. Severus cannot afford to look this man and wonder _who_ he is: it matters merely _what_ he is.

He is Severus’ entry toll, the price he must pay to reach for power.

So be it.

Raising his wand, the movement graceful and long-coached by Lucius’ careful tutelage, intended to remove the stiffness from Severus’ limbs and almost make of him a gentleman, Severus does not bother to whisper the word aloud, but lets it ring within his mind, lets it permeate his very body and expand outward with the force of a bomb.

_Sectumsempra!_

Blood soaks the dining room floor of Malfoy Manor, and Severus feels himself smile as he hears the Dark Lord’s exclamation of dark delight.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hit me up [on Dreamwidth](https://dictionarywrites.dreamwidth.org/2287.html). Requests always open. I also run a [Snape-centric comm](https://snapecomm.dreamwidth.org/)!


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